SWAG��Ƶ

Three SWAG��Ƶ Marine Sciences graduate students recently traveled to San Francisco for the 21^st Biennal Conference on Marine Mammals, sponsored by the International Society for Marine Mammalogy. The conference brought more than 2,500 marine mammalogists together to discuss the latest developments in their field. Graduate students from the class of 2015 Rebecca Frowine, Laura Sirack and Lauren Bamford joined SWAG��Ƶ faculty in giving presentations on their research.

Sirak and Kathryn Ono, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Marine Sciences presented the study “Bycatch of gray and harbor seals in sink gillnet fisheries in the Northeast United States.” Seals are often caught in nets during normal commercial fishing operations.  The team studied the sink-gillnet fishery in New England and found that most of the seals caught were less than a year old, and males were caught more than females. Areas where seals were caught were correlated with the location of places where seals rest on land.

Rebecca Frowine and Ono’s study “Suitability of Mount Desert Rock, Maine for grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) parturition” focused on the increasing grey seal population in New England. As it increases, more land based sites are required for giving birth and nursing young. The goal of this study was to determine if Mount Desert Rock, Maine was a suitable site for grey seal pupping.  Observations of seals on Mount Desert Rock during the breeding season, combined with comparisons of meteorological data from other breeding sites has led to the conclusion that it is not an optimal breeding site for this species.

Ono presented the study, “Harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) pups demonstrate consistent individual differences in response to a novel stimulus.” It described studying harbor seal pups to determine if they demonstrated consistent reactions to an object they do not normally encounter, in this case, a remote controlled toy motorcycle. Pups demonstrated differences in reactions to the stimulus, ranging from approaching, to retreat, to no response.  Pups tested three times over a month showed consistent short-term reactions, but behavior changed over the long term.  

Bamford presented “A Parasite-Pinniped-Fisheries Interaction: Codworm (Pseudoterranova) in Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) in Relation to Seal Distribution in the Gulf of Maine” along with Assistant Professor Carrie Byron, Ph.D. and Visiting Assistant Lecturer Anna Bass, Ph.D. Codworm is a parasite that lives in many commercial fish, including Atlantic cod.  These parasites spend part of their life cycle in seals. The research team studied the proportion of fish infected with codworm as well as the number of codworm per fish in Atlantic cod throughout the Gulf of Maine, and correlated it with the proximity to seal haulouts.